Last Thursday OSNews had the opportunity to meet Miguel de Icaza, founder of Gnome, Ximian and among other things leader of the much discussed, Mono project. Miguel is a talented and versatile developer but he is also a very intelligent businessman able to understand the industry on many different levels. Talking to Miguel guarantees that you are very quickly taken away by his enthusiasm and optimism and his thoughtful strategies and vision on how OSS will take over the world.

I'm glad to hear of Miguel's interest in Debian. I purchased "Connector" a while back but gave up its use as there were so many problems getting it to work in my Debian based Xandros distro. Please pass it on that one customer would like to see some Debian support for Connector.
Thanks

They're rewriting Evolution in C# and porting it to Windows? Kewl Now maybe I can get my friend off Outlook once and forall (I'm tired of supporting it), assuming you can get it to sync contacts and such with Pocket PC devices.

I don't think it is a full rewrite. The new version of Evolution has some bits in C#, but it is still mostly in C. But GTK+ and GTK# are already ported on Windows, so it doesn't matter which bits are written in what, it's gonna work anyway.

Now that ximian is not a little tiny company fighting for survival anymore, why do they not open source connector? This is really key and lots of other projects could use this work. They should just include it by default with evolution as part of its standard support for imap/pop/ical/etc.

"Even the Linux desktop is almost usable today", he said semi-joking and continued "if the whole world is using Linux in the future, US will have to 'switch' eventually too
The rest of the world doing things differently doesn't bother anyone in the US. You're talking about a country that still uses Imperial measurements and hasn't yet discovered A4 paper. The US government will simply mandate that all communications with it must be in MS Word format (departments like USAID already do so), and everyone else will comply, especially third-world countries that need the aid money.

The beginning of the Cocoa bindings are on Mono CVS,
they were written by Urs Muff from Quark, and with the new
found stability of the Mono JIT, and the easy-to-install
PPC packages, we hope that the native Cocoa bindings for
Mono will soon take off.

To access the Evolution data store, you can use today C#
bindings. We will keep working on improving those as time
goes on, and as we learn of new use scenarios.

Regarding our pesimist friend Rayiner: all of us writing free software are in the business of changing the world. Ever since day one, people did not believe that free software would one day be this popular. We hope to prove you wrong as well.

I would love to be able to have a crack at developing apps on C# on OS X.

but with apple, who knows. they might have a build of Cocoa# internal and are just waiting until Mono reaches 1.0 to announce it.

and getting GTK# native to aqua would be great as well since one could easily port apps from Linux to OS X, all one would need to do is tell the app GUI to use the universal menu bar rather than the app menu bar just like you have to do in Java ATM.

"The rest of the world doing things differently doesn't bother anyone in the US. You're talking about a country that still uses Imperial measurements and hasn't yet discovered A4 paper. The US government will simply mandate that all communications with it must be in MS Word format (departments like USAID already do so), and everyone else will comply, especially third-world countries that need the aid money."

Incredibly simple observation and directly on target. There is no battle for the OS market in the U.S., and it's likely to remain so for the duration. Wish what you want to wish, dream what you want to dream, however a lot of the lockdown has already taken place.

You mention at the end of the article home video software. Can you tell me what's wrong with kino-0.7.1 as a non-linear video editor for linux? I use this application almost every weekend to edit home video off my digital video camera. I find it easy to use, and with plugins has a lot of useful effects and transitions (not that I use many, because they usually detract from the material, rather than add anything). I find, when compared to friends home videos done on Windows software, that mine are consistently of higher quality. I don't know if that's them, or the software they use, however, it indicates to me that linux is no further behind in terms of home video editing tools than Windows.

That's the thing: I don't. I would like something more well-presented, more welcome and easier to figure out, like iMovie. Anyways, I have already talked about this here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5335 no reason to start that discussion again.

Regarding our pesimist friend Rayiner: all of us writing free software are in the business of changing the world. Ever since day one, people did not believe that free software would one day be this popular. We hope to prove you wrong as well.

I'm actually quite an enthusiastic supporter of free software. I do believe that it has a good chance of succeeding, in the long run. However, transition in the US will not happen, as you suggest, as a result of international pressure. We in the US are perfectly happy to wallow in our inertia, oblivious of the rest of the world. Even if everyone switches to something else, we will still use what we want to use, and mandate that anybody who communicates with us use our software. Both my father and I work for US government contractors, and I have seen repeatedly that when you do business with the US government, you do it by their rules, or risk losing their business entirely.

As you will be aware, things move forward in the OSS world. Kino has been ported to GTK+2, and the UI has been enhanced in 0.7.1. All the things that were missing from previous versions (like effects/transitions, comprehensive export to all major formats, including DVD, (S)VCD, and divx) are now there. The comments in the article you linked to seem to be short and dismissive and don't really analyse where the shortcomings are. Might be worth you having another look at kino to see how far it's come since you last looked. Not wanting to start a discussion, just saying that things have moved on since that article, and might be worth a revisit.

If people in the third world cannot afford Windows, how in heavens name can they afford the rich hardware to run, say, GNOME? Desktop Linux is inordinately resource hungry, which is odd as it has a fraction of the functionality (on the desktop) that OS X or Windows does. I really wish the F/OSS community would get their heads out of the clouds and be logically consistent in their efforts.

I will have to agree with you, in part. I still run XP on my dual Celeron 533 Mhz with just 256 MBs of RAM, without a single problem. Installing Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE or even Slackware on this machine, their desktop come to a crawl, I can't use Linux or FreeBSD on that dual Celeron machine.

When I started using Linux in the end of the '90s, a generic Linux desktop with KDE/Gnome *was* faster/responsive than Windows 9x/ME. Today, I don't find this to be the case anymore.

On the other hand, my Slackware will work fine on a 1.3 GHz AMD Duron machine with 256 MBs of RAM, which is a Linare/Walmart machine that costs about $220 USD (with 17" BenQ monitor ( http://www.benq.com/display/crt_p774.html ) for $80+tax). I think ~$300 for a full machine with Linux, is not that bad of a price even for a poor country's citizens.

Yes, it could have being better if these poor countries could use old 200 Mhz to 1 GHz machines for much cheaper with 64 or 128 MBs of RAM, but even with the above configuration running a modern Linux, it should be fine. I do agree though that the Linux desktop in general (both KDE and Gnome) need further optimizations. The overall responsiveness of the desktop experience is not optimal even on my AthlonXP 1600+ with 512 MB RAM.

It's been said that the biggest power in the US are its consumers. There was a time when companies would be made or broken by consumer uptake. Consumer-oriented groups in the 70's and 80's were the biggest forces to reckon with, and manufacturing companies would make sure to consult these institutions or suffer being snubbed to oblivion.

Of course, that power has been significantly weakened by wily attempts by the US government and large producers and manufacturing companies by either trying to make the US citizenry more passive or by effectively dividing the nation as much as possible. However, I still believe that when properly incensed, the sleeping giant consumer would raise its lethargic head.

Take, for instance, software development and support call services. It was totally unheard of before for companies to outsource en masse such jobs and services abroad, primarilly because of patriotism. Now, huge companies which are consumers for these outsourced services are continually pouring dollars outside of the US and getting their government to support it because it's economically sound to do so.

The point it, F/OSS makes sense both technically and economically. If US companies and the US government do not realize this, capitalize on it and even spearhead the future direction of F/OSS (like the NSA did with SELinux), then good riddance.

I refer to the patent issues. The software issue is one that is actively changing, with various components of the US government itself starting to adopt Linux and open source software.

The situation is one of patents: if everyone in the world starts using software that infringes on bogus patents and we got everyone running our software, we will likely have more supporters to eliminate bad patents.

I spoke about Gnumeric as Eugenia asked me directly about it during our lunch ;-)

My position is still that OpenOffice is the best way of getting open source adopted everywhere as its the most complete suite. Both the Gnome office and KDE office are good intentioned attempts of builinding an office suite, but they are many years away of solving the general problem that Open Office solves today.

Novell is working extensively to improve OpenOffice: the whole company is moving to it, and there is no better way of improving and enhancing the software than using it yourself.

I think that in the future video editing might be a required component of a standard desktop solution, as both Windows and the MacOS raise the expectation bar.

If I were to write something from scratch, I would use Mono and Gtk#, but if I were to reuse/contribute to something that has already a large codebase (maybe Kino, maybe something else), I would probably develop bindings for it, and use Mono as an extension language to do it.

Euginia: Firstly, that's $300 **US**. Secondly, how much do you think such hardware would cost in your typical third world country? They'd be lucky if they could get such a system for for **600** USD.

I think you over-estimate the resources the typical citizen in these countries has at their disposal. 300 USD for a computer? Yeah, as soon as they figure-out how they're going to eat tomorrow. 600+ USD? NO WAY, forget it. IT IS A NON-STARTER.

Herein lies a key problem with desktop FOSS. In their own, insular little world, FOSS devs can afford to throw shameless sums of money in hardware at badly written code to compensate for its inefficiency. Not everyone is in the same position. Frankly, to posit the notion that poor people can somehow better afford Linux, when it takes more expensive hardware to run than Windows does, is spurious, fallacious illogic to say the least.

I agree with you in part, to be able to easier "invade" the computing industry of a third world country, you DO need to run on old computers *fast*.

However, to write optimized code requires _more_ time than it usually does, because of debugging and profiling, plus it requires high quality tools. I don't think that your *average* OSS hacker is going to care about crazy optimizations, most don't even know how to use a profiler.

Regarding the 300/600 US$, I don't think that a computer that costs here $300 is going to cost over there $600. Not necessarily at least.

Most relevent quote: if the whole world is using Linux in the future, US will have to 'switch' eventually too

Reading the linked article had me doing a double take, because I don't think the title above represents the article, or even that quote. The title implies a hostile and unified confrontation. It also implies a lack of choice.

I'm assuming miguel's quote above is referring to the economic and competitive impact of using less expensive but capable software vs. those organizations having to pay for that service. I doubt he's referring to Linux's interoperability (or implied lack of) with other operating systems, namely windows.

Myself, I use Linux every day, and it's been my desktop of choice for at least three years - I keep Windows *only* to play some games on. I do my best to convince friends and associates of the advantages of this OS. I do see Linux succeeding in the market place, and I appreciate that as much as the next geek, but only because of the choice it represents.

Computers can be purchased for 300 USD, which is in fact
a lot of money there, but more house holds can afford this.

In regions where this is not possible, governments have
started the adoption of community sites where people can
use computers for free, the equivalent of going to the
post office to send mail. Brazil has the telecentros in
Sao Paolo and Rio Grande do Sul.

> I don't think the title above represents the article, or even that quote

Try to fit that quote in 410 pixels with FONT SIZE=3 and then come back to me and tell me how to do it. I even had to ask my husband to suggest for me a title that both fits in the table cell and represents the situation (and is quite catchy too , because I had hard time finding one.

I think that people in most third world countries buy most of their more expensive goodies paying a little bit each month. For example, 600 USD could be paid in 24 months, but there would still be the interests which would make it even more expensive.
And if you feel pity of them, imagine the new Longhorn that will require something like 4 to 6 GHz and 1 to 2 GBs of ram (of course the real requirements can't be known so before-hand).
And the use of pirated software isn't something one should be proud of. So the real pain for them is to fork the money to pay for software.
You can you your computer as soon as you have the hardware, so that's the only expense that most are willing to pay for.
(Disclose: I live in Brazil)

And has he passed the proper test in his state of residence to become a professional engineer? In which engineering discipline (electrical, civil, mechanical, nuclear, chemical) is trained? If none of those questions can be answered positively with regards to engineering then it is disengenuous to label him an "engineer".

Microsoft's improper title of MSCE be dammed - just because someone can apply a band-aid to your cut you do not refer to them as "doctor". Anyone can look up laws relevant to their jurisdiction but that does not make them a "lawyer". Engineers, *real* engineers, spend long hours in study and learning to earn the title. With the title comes levels of responsibility and culpability that should afford them the right to not have their title diluted by improper useage.

People who study Computer Science are not engineers, are not recognized as engineers in any state of the union, and are not held to the same level of ethics and responsibility as engineers. In short, they aren't engineers and shouldn't be refered to as such.

xp slugish on pentium 3 800 MHZ while latest kde/gnome fly on this box , it is said thing but thr real problem is lack of desktop dostro not redhat/fedora (Realy sucks) mandrake (QA is nowhere) the closest one is suse . on the other hand let's look at it and as we see gnome/kde become faster and less memory consumption any major version and compare to next windows version well nothing need to say about it.

You think the assertion that a 300 USD system costing around 600 USD in a third world country (hereafter known as "TW") is unreasonable? Let's see what http://www.compareindia.com/searchresult.asp?frm=1>Compare , a sort of Indian Reseller Ratings for all manner of electronic goods, has to say:

My HTML code was butchered. The first one is supposed to be from a site called "Compare India", the second is from "The Universal Currency Calculator". You'll have to copy and paste the links if you want to visit them.

Regarding your comment, please don't come up on me like that, cause I don't like it and I might bite. I told you a zillion times, I DO agree with you on many of your points, but just not on everything. I am from Greece, and while Greece is not third world, it is not first world either. And there are PCs over there costing $300.

If more households can afford 500-600 USD for a computer (which is more like what it would be - see my comment above), then why couldn't they afford Windows? Chances are, they're getting a copy of Windows with their new system anyway. Your logic doesn't follow.

Furthermore, if the government can, likewise, afford to pay for public access systems, are you saying they can't afford Windows either? Your rationale doesn't make sense. You can make the philosophical arguement that FOSS is better than proprietary, but that wasn't the original point you were making in the article. Originally, you said that Linux is cheaper than Windows. However, I've just shown your arguement to be logically fallacious.

So you think the idea that a 300 USD system wouldn't cost more like 600 USD in a third world country (hereafter know as 'TWD')? Well, let's see what Compare India @ http://www.compareindia.com/searchresult.asp?frm=1 , a sort of Indian Reseller Ratings for all manner of electronic goods, has to say about it:

According to them, prices range from 23,000 Indian Rupees (or about 512 USD) for a Celeron 1200 w/128 MB RAM, to 150,599 Indian Rupees (or about 3,350 USD) for a P4 2400 w/256 MB RAM.*

Remember, India is a relatively affluent TWD. Imagine what prices must be like in many African countries, assuming people can actually find a vendor there.

"Try to fit that quote in 410 pixels with FONT SIZE=3 and then come back to me and tell me how to do it. I even had to ask my husband to suggest for me a title that both fits in the table cell and represents the situation (and is quite catchy too , because I had hard time finding one."

Hmmm...International Pressure eventually brings the US into the Linux fold.

"Now that ximian is not a little tiny company fighting for survival anymore, why do they not open source connector? "

So they have a business model that works, this allows them to survive, and as a reward for this that should tank their business model. Things like not opensourcing things like this could be what keeps them alive.

Far as third world countries and not affording a computer. Something to keap in mind is a computer is not a needed thing. The personal computers is a product of the first world where there is money to be burned, and then later more and more uses came about. In a country like the US a computer is somewhat needed today, but still plenty of people do fine without. In a country where they can not afford a computer I doubt their is much of a need for them. If next to no one there has a computer much of the reasons we have them is straight out the window since communication is out, no one you need to communicate with. Also is their even a way to get online? I really don't see to many people living in a tiny rusted steal shack suddenly needing a computer. If they are in a position to know about computers and have a need for them, they are probably in a situation where they can afford a computer.

You need food, water, clothes, shelter, healthcare in life, computers arn't a requirement. If it's something you can't afford, and it's not a requirement for life, you don't need it. Not to say it wouldn't be nice, and might not improve your life. I'm sure someone here will come back with something like. "what if third world child wants to grow up and be a programmer, or a engineer" well lets be realistic at the odds of this, and if a need for a computer is the biggest hurdle in this. Even in a first world country you can become just about anything without a computer.

"Frankly, to posit the notion that poor people can somehow better afford Linux, when it takes more expensive hardware to run than Windows does, is spurious, fallacious illogic to say the least."

Not sure how someone can say this when XP takes up at least 3x more memory on the hard drive than most distros and most certainly does not come with lightweight window managers like Afterstep and Fluxbox for the truly resource impaired. I'm temporarily using a Celeron 433mhz, 128mb RAM, 4.3GB pc which is probably more typical a machine held from over the late nineties, and while it's going to be sluggish with whatever you put on here, you ain't gonna fit XP on this box.

Information however is. The world is now a global presence, and a lot of third and second are skipping the industrial age and going for the information age. What is healthcare if you're using outdated information? What is food if you don't know the best ways to grow it? What is water if you don't know the best ways to find, and clean it (a lot of water sources are dirty). What is shelter if you don't learn the best ways to get, and keep it? Computers are mearly a means to an end, and in this case it's a better future if not for the parents, then for their decendents.

1) Afterstep and Fluxbox are not desktop mamangers, they are mere window managers and, thus, cannot be compared to Windows Explorer. There are similar "window manager"-type Explrer replacements available in Windows, too: geOShell comes to mind. You know what? They're faster even than Explorer! The point is, the only legitamate GUIs in Linux (in terms of equivalent functionality) that can be compared to Windows Explorer are much more resource-intensive and, therefore, slower than, Explorer. One cannot reasonably or logically hold-up a simple window manager as an alternative to Linux desktop managers when doing a comparison against Windows.

> The US government will simply mandate that all
> communications with it must be in MS Word format

Rayner, although I usually agree with you, I believe this hypothesis is unrealistic. It would mean actively favouring a monopoly, which the government cannot do so explicitely. If it did, it would be like declaring war to the rest of the world :-)

Know you think that, the time Longhorn is finally released, that Linux will have similar system requirements? In fact, if the current reality holds, Linux will require *more* than Longhorn (since Linux, in its current form, has much higher system requirements than Windows 2000 or XP).

Miguel, your an open source advocate and you know that working for little will not help you or help the world. Why do you support the GPL? WHY. Yeah, it takes food away from my employees. It's the alternative to outsourcing.

About the comment about will force the US into open source is stupid. The USA is the reason open source is so strong now, USA companies have embraced it and what not and well there ya go. really dumb comment about that.

fact windows xp required pentium 2 350 and above but it's know near to be usable in pentium 2 350 while kde 3.2 work there without a glitch (usable and not slugish!!!) and for the future we see linux here and know while longhorn still far away with alot of hardware requirements.

I am sorry, I just can't believe this. I have tested many different distros on much faster PCs than your PII@350 and I can tell you, they don't feel faster than XP on the same or other slower PC when doing things (or loading).

Know you think that, the time Longhorn is finally released, that Linux will have similar system requirements? In fact, if the current reality holds, Linux will require *more* than Longhorn (since Linux, in its current form, has much higher system requirements than Windows 2000 or XP).

No it doesn't necessarily. I check my resource usage al the time and Linux uses less mostly, but not by much. Besides, there is stuff you can always turn off, or you can get a lighter desktop, something you cannot really do with windows.

You should also mind the themes you are using, the really good ones can minimise resource usage too.

I live in the third world, and I think hardware costs are ok really. I actually have a fairly top end machine for anywhere in the world and it doesn't really cost that much. I know Durons and the like run Linux farily decently, (I had one) and these are really cheap. Plus if we are planning for the future, they are going to get even cheaper too. windows prices are now really out there. I could build a computer and have software costing about as much as hardware. If I can improve on the hardware instead, I can get an even better experience too and save on software costs.

yeah, the linux desktop is pretty slow so I switched back to windows and stopped using beOS because there isnt a good version out yet. i still don't understand how the rest of the world will *force* the us to linux. there are many other open source alternatives to linux... i also think the biggest linux companies are US-based. It also seems the reason linux is so big is because of the USA.

I also don't see the point of copying off of commercial software then bashing it.. i can't wait until open source organizations actually create something that is different and useful ;-) (although they have, im talking about something with huge impact like java or .net) not just php and python and what not.. although zend is the company behind php for the most part

False. That's spin-doctoring. That's fine, pretend that black is white and vice-versa, but you aren't doing Linux a wit of good in the long run.

I am writing this comment in Windows XP SP1 on a PII 550 w/128 MB RAM. I can run a browser, MS Word, play a high-resolution DivX movie or listen to music, have an instant messenger and Usenet client all running at once and comfortably. There is no way I could do that in a rescent release of Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the OS itself won't even run nicely on this machine.

The above statements are cold, hard facts, and exist independently of assertion to the contrary. I know, because I've tried running Linux on this machine many, many times. People know the truth, and no amount of lying about the reality can change their knowledge.

What do you mean? I thought the point was making the best of a shortage of resources. It's easier to change out a RAM chip than switch hard drives, so I would think the hard drive should be the most important factor. If you're saying that KDE and GNOME are resource hogs, that might well be. But if you're saying that XP is the best way to make use of limited resources, I beg to differ. The whole point, from my view, is that OSS offers you more options on how to best make use of those limited resources. As with this machine that I described, I would have a choice of getting a new copy of Windows 98 or using OSS (FreeBSD in my case).

"Afterstep and Fluxbox are not desktop mamangers, they are mere window managers and, thus, cannot be compared to Windows Explorer."

Why not? While it's true they are not as popular as something like GNOME, but people who take the time to get used to them and find them very useful. And let's face it, the Windows desktop has alot of extra features that the average user doesn't even need.

People can argue which is better, the Open Source operating systems or Windows all day long. Points could be made on boths sides, but I think flexibility has to go to OSS.

i didn't say faster i did say not slugish run well when few programs open ,while xp work well on that computer after clean install when u add few needed program im client antivirues browser (other then the crap preloaded ie) and a office suite the system become very slugish to the point that is not usable that it's not the case on unix desktop but as i said before linux lack of desktop oriented distro , and it will be right to say that fedora 1 is very slugish on this computer but even slax (live cd) run well there ,and by that i mean i don't care if program taken 5 or 10 seconds to start the important thing is that after loaded program will work well and here we benefit from much better scheduler and memory menagment of linux (and same goes for freebsd).

that's the biggest crap i have ever heard while i admire your exprience i think i can say i have alot of experience in that term so u made a miracle and winxp work well with 128M of memory hell no with p4 2.4 it doesn't work well with that amount of memory.

Shall I post a screenshot somewhere? :-) Of course, that could be easily faked. Maybe a video of my desktop would suffice, showing the systems properties dialogue, along with the browser (a tabbed browser no less, My IE), movie, MS Word, Miranda instant messenger and Grab It! Usenet client all running in tandem, and everything still multitasking smoothly (except, maybe, when Grab It is decoding large binaries from Usenet, then the system skips a bit due to the hard drive bottleneck (it's a laptop). OTOH, linux would become positively unresponsive).

Sometimes in Linux, the mouse locks-up cold momentarily due to system load. That NEVER happens in Windows.

You could be right about Linux being slow for Desktop use on that machine of yours but:

"There is no way I could do that in a rescent release of Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the OS itself won't even run nicely on this machine. [ on a PII 550 w/128 MB RAM ]"

That's just nonsense. I have a P90 with just 16mb memory as router for 3 machines, running a www-proxy, dns-proxy, email, 20gb samba share on a 2.4 kernel and it runs just fine and is capable of using it's 10mbit nic fully.

why they aren't open connector ?
that is a very good question i'll do hope that novel will gpl it as they made with yast .
to the other think i don't think think that that linux desktop boost will come 3 world country , linux desktop is making advance every day but it will take few years before we will see share of more than 10% (about 3-5).

Congratulations! That's certainly one of the best articles I've read on this website. Only one way to tell you weren't English native (em-dash followed by comma, not something done in English) as well as one or two minor problems. But in general the style was very nice and I certainly enjoyed reading it.

Check our archives, we do have some gems in there (and some bad ones too , like our interview with freebsd or freedesktop.org, really nice articles.

>Only one way to tell you weren't English native

This has nothing to do with me, the article got proof readed, but I had to wait 2 days for that. This is why most of the time I decide to post my articles without being proof read because most articles are current news and have to go live "now". Not always I have the luxury of waiting, so do expect poor grammar in the future.

I do not think they can opensource connector anyway, or it doesn't make sense. You still need a license to connect to the Exchange server, so it is quite pointless. They also want the revenue for every connector license sold. BI oculd be wrong though.

Rayner, you may be right about american people and gouvernement, I don't know, you are american, not me

But there is one thing that I am pretty sure of: the US won't domine the world economy forever. China, India, are really strong countries, which can lead the world economy in 20 years, maybe. These countries have strong comitment to linux, for several reasons.

I am living In france, but I am doing an internship in Japan right now. Linux is pretty big, here, too. When the US won't be the biggest country theay are today, they will have to follow different rules...

First point: If you think Gnome or KDE are slow, you can use TWM or something. Replacing the Exporer shell on Windows doesn't gain to nearly as much speed. And whether or not WinXP does better on slow hardware or not is not exactly a closed question.

Second point: Which do you think is more likely to solve the problems of people who **can't spend much money**? OSS or commercial software? Duh... MS doesn't care about them because they could only pay $20 for Windows. A company like Libranet could use OSS to produce a distro just for poor hardware, selling it for $20 because they are standing on the shoulders of man-eons of OSS work. MS doesn't have that option.

I really don't see why the US would adopt linux just because the rest of the world is using it. I am an American, and it is readily seen that Americans will take whatever products companies shove down their throats. Americans are also stubbornly patriotic. They are reluctant to adopt foreign standards. Take for example, that Americans never adopted the Metric System, despite it being far superior, and the rest of the world using it.

Miguel is very aware of the patent situation in US today and the dangers this [will] mean for Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS). He acknowledges that most patents today should be invalid, as they were filed over trivial technical solutions, but the US patent office seems to be doing a poor job seperating the valid ones from the trivial ones. This situation creates many lawsuits every year in US and according to Miguel, this will only get worse with time.

India and China two of the most populous and tech savvy nations and the targets of the massive ongoing outsoucing efforts, have patent offices as well.

What is to prevent US companies doing business in those countries from registering their entire patent portfolios with the local governments? Or The US to form cross patenting deals with these countries, under pressure from US business lobbies?

The patent issue isn't trivial and making plans of world domination by assuming Patents are a US only phenomenon is dangerous. The very same businesses, that use the patent office here are opening R&D centres in these two countries, and could use the patent offices there for similar purposes. I am sure other countries have patent offices as well, but China and India seem more likely to be sources of the most number of developers.

One thing I failed to mention. India and China are the worlds fastest growing economies and are likely to pass many developed countries in the EU in a few years.

Also the massive proliferation of pirated software in these countries is going to dampen the rapid adoption of linux there as envisaged by some. You can get any commercial closed source software in India gratis and fully cracked. With a fast growing economy and more people being able to afford computers, windows installations are bound to grow, as it is available free of charge from local computer assemblers.

"The rest of the world doing things differently doesn't bother
anyone in the US."

It'll bother them.

"....especially third-world countries that need the aid money."

The US is not the only country "giving" aid money to third world countries. Or better, having economic interrests (e.g. oil) in third world countries. (see Iraq)
The world economy is changing, my friend. The US will have to adapt as well.

There is a famous patent tale about Aviation in the US.
The Wright brothers made the first working airplaine and patented it. They wanted to be the only Aviation firm in the US. That slowed down significantly innovation because they spent time and money sueing other US firms instead of focusing on innovation.

Meanwhile European countries developed an indigenous industry, learning from Wright "proof of concept" and a very competitive environment. The Wright brothers made a airplane without actually inventing the concept ( see prior works of Otto Lilienthal, Clément Ader, ... )

The US gov. anihilated these patent issues in the wake of WW1 to allow the US airplane industry to catch up with Europe.

Many comparisons can be made with the software industry now : Patents that may slow down innovation in the US and ignored elsewhere. Firms patenting ideas that have already been explored in research papers. People more interested in selling licences than in making software affordable for everyone, ...

"The rest of the world doing things differently doesn't bother
anyone in the US."

"It'll bother them."

Indeed it will. Just look at the international GSM mobile phone standard. I can use my GSM phone nearly everywhere in the world, even in countries like China or Iraq. The US tries to dictate a non-GSM standard for Iraq. But that won't work. I am not anti-American at all, but the "our way or no way" motto should go, or the US will eventually be isolated from the rest of the world. I can easily see the process here in the Netherlands. Once a very pro-US country, now more and more people have a negative opionion of the US. The same happens all over the world. Four more years of Bush as president will probably be disastrous for US international relations.

We have p3 500MHz 128MB RAM machines at my university that used to run NT4 but now run XP, and I can tell you those things are slooooooooow. Oh I can't believe how slow they are. Unfortunately the administrator has disabled the display properties dialog, so the theme engine can't be turned off (which I know from experience will boost performance considerably).

I've got a recent version of Linux running on a PR233 with 32MB of RAM. Granted it's using ICEWM... but it smokes win98 on the same machine. If ICEWM supported the notification area protocol and more drag'n'drop stuff, then it'd totally rock on old machines.

KDE seems to be getting faster with each release. Memory usage is still huge. Branding all OSS software as slow because of the big DE's is wrong IMO. The Linux _kernel_ is *very* fast and optimised -- the people coding that really care about performance. However a lot of apps seem to be very sloppy (I'm running dcgui now which is riddled with memory leaks, granted it's very much pre-release though).

I am sorry for breaking reality upon you, but if you believe that eventually US software patent law will give way under international pressure, think again.

In the EU, the push is currently strong towards unlimited patentability of data structures, protocols, algorithms, and ideas. This after the EU parliament decided against such a patentability, and with a very good chance of getting passed within the next week.

This is lobbied by a) the US software industry, and b) some European big players who think that EU software patents will allow them to play with the US biggies on level ground.

Don't under estimate Microsoft. They are WAY ahead of Mono and with their next release of SQL Server and .NET they will continue their path to blowing away Java and Linux. Microsoft lowered their prices on their operating systems and has made the value proposition so hi now that Linux is still left way in the dust. Again, I own Aspire and when we estimate develpoment costs for clients we can't get close to beating what we can charge for windows over a Linux solution. Becuase of the whole business world transitioning to .NET, Linux is getting crushed as I write this. The more applications written for a platform the more popular it will be. Microsoft is still 5 - 7 years ahead of any of these other Linux projects. I would like to see Linux and some competition but unfortnatly, most Linux people do not want to hear the truth from those of us who pay big money to develop software. They want to be biased and argue most of the time over how they hate Microsoft, vs. from a business standpoint how to beat competitors tactically and strategically. So here is to Microsoft. They do!

If Sun was smart, now would be about the perfect time to GPL Java. Just give it up Sun. It's not hard for a devoted Java developer to learn C#, and I'm about to if Mono keeps gaining traction in the free software world. I thought I would never learn a Microsoft technology, but now I'm not so sure. Don't be stupid Sun, Java is an amazing language (especially with the upcoming 1.5), so please don't let it die because some idiotic know it all executives think that GPL'ing it will cause a "fork". Stop with the lame excuses Sun. Gosling, do something to make this happen!

You must be joking. All the solutions we build and implement today for are clients are platform neutral, and our clients demand them that way.

They don't want anything to tie them to a specific platfrom. They might use Windows today, Linux Tommorow, *BSD the next day and MacOSX next month. Some use a mix of all.

They way is to use tools which are vendor neutral. We Utilize Java, PHP, Firebird,MySQL (sonn PostgreSQL as well - 7.5 will have a native win version), XUL, Apache httpd, Tomcat etc, both for server and client side.

Screw him up his stupid butt! If he doesn't like the way things are run in the U.S. maybe he should get out of my country. Forcing people to use Linux is just as bad as Microsoft forcing people to use Windows. There is no winner in either situation, and if this butt-clown wants to play this way then perhaps I will find another OS that is not forced upon me.

Forcing people to use Linux is just as bad as Microsoft forcing people to use Windows.

This is true. But - and this is a big but - Linux generally uses open file formats and standards. If an application is avaliable, or a file readable on Linux, it will most likely also be avaliable and/or readable on Windows.

I think it would be more accurate for the article to state that "The rest of the world will force the USA to use open standards". If true, this can only be a good thing. Look what open email standards did for communication.

I will have to agree with you, in part. I still run XP on my dual Celeron 533 Mhz with just 256 MBs of RAM, without a single problem. Installing Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE or even Slackware on this machine, their desktop come to a crawl, I can't use Linux or FreeBSD on that dual Celeron machine.

Pufff! I run Debian on AMD K6-2 300 MHz, 4MB SVirge Video Card, 256MB RAM and it rocks while running Apache, PostgreSQL, SNMP daemon and Alamin SMS Gateway at the same time. Since when is Windows more responsive???? I miss something or what? KDE and Fluxbox are veeery responsive. And yes, I live in poor country and working in GSM company (company with prety good cash balance ), and let me tell you one thing. We already f**ked up several WinXP machines (with licensed copies of Windows) and installed Knoppix + Debian repositories (PostgreSQL is not included in Knoppix). Why? Because when it comes to automating things (ftp this from HP-UX or Solaris, make some gawk and perl things to it, put it in DB, generate a report in html (I love Perl + GD::Chart), clean some stuff and similar), you became to realize that Windows is not an apropriate solution!
Is it clear?

"if the whole world is using Linux in the future, US will have to 'switch' eventually too, regardless of patent problems. And when that happens, there's no stopping".

Countries don't switch to Linux. Individuals, companies, and government institutions switch to linux or something else. And to suggest "the whole world" is going to go lock-step with linux is absolutely ridiculous. People use software as a tool, not because of some rabid ideology. If linux or BSD or whatever suits their needs then they will use that.

I'm surprised Miguel made these comments, considering that most of the interviews I've read of him usually have him being pretty realistic about linux.

In any case, something like 10% of the home desktop market is still around 8 to 10 years off for linux. And that might be pushing it.

As far as linux in the third world, another poster was spot on when he said that Gnome is just as bad or IMO a worse resource hog than XP. Gtk+ redraw is still a mess. If I was in the third world I would most likely be using a pirated version of Windows 98. Not some bloated crap like Gnome which I'm unable to use on modest hardware.

"If people in the third world cannot afford Windows, how in heavens name can they afford the rich hardware to run, say, GNOME? Desktop Linux is inordinately resource hungry, which is odd as it has a fraction of the functionality (on the desktop) that OS X or Windows does. I really wish the F/OSS community would get their heads out of the clouds and be logically consistent in their efforts."
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Bravo! Especially the part about getting their heads outta their butts. As a third-world Debian user, my "GNOME" is XFCE4. We ain't got time to play games literally, much less afford P4 processors, VIA is fine, anything beyond 1.0 Gh is
luxury for the most part, except for heavy compiling which only a minority of the total users engage in. Keep it lean and mean.

one of mine died. it was going to be my DragonFly BSD car computer. there's nothing i wanted more than having that machine running again. half tempted to throw $60 at a setup on ebay, but i know i could get a modern 1.5Ghz+ system at that price. the other bp6 i owned is still humming along as my parents computer. love those babies: my 466 celerons were 600 stable.

I guarantee you that common people aren't as worried about "redraw issues" as you are. That's like attacking something that's not even there. The real problem isn't the slowness of the system, but the applications and easy of use that aren't there.
And do you really think that if one uses pirated software, they will choose something really boring and old like Windows 98 ? ;-) It's most likely they will have the latest versions of the softwares (Windows XP, Office XP, Windows 2003 Server, etc.).

First of all I'm not worried about the redraw issue because I have a p4 3.0 with a gig of ram. And to suggest that other people aren't worried about it is ridiculous. It's there alright, and it's a constant issue that comes up on #gnome on irc. Windows XP/2000 requires a lot of ram and some up to date hardware that some guy in Africa most likely isn't go to have. That's why I said they would be using something like win98 on a p-166 with 64 meg of ram...a system that you would have to be a masochist to run modern Gnome or KDE on.

am writing this comment in Windows XP SP1 on a PII 550 w/128 MB RAM. I can run a browser, MS Word, play a high-resolution DivX movie or listen to music, have an instant messenger and Usenet client all running at once and comfortably. There is no way I could do that in a rescent release of Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the OS itself won't even run nicely on this machine.

The above statements are cold, hard facts, and exist independently of assertion to the contrary. I know, because I've tried running Linux on this machine many, many times. People know the truth, and no amount of lying about the reality can change their knowledge.
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On my PII/266 w/128 MB RAM, I did a Debian/Sid lean installation (no Tasksel/Deselect), just added what i wanted with apt-get. Right now, I got open: Mozilla-mail, Opera, Jabber, OOo, XChat, and got some photos open in xzgv, no movies, no dvd, my total memory consumption according to memstat and and the mem-meter at XFCE4, is 59 mb of memory.

What is going to pay your bills ? its not free software. I myself believe in MAKING money instead of giving my software away for free. You see my code talks to me, and it says "i do not want to be free"

You don't even have to write the code yourself,not all of it,so you have plenty of time for the ladies instead.
If you want to work on proprietary code there must be a market for that also when the Linux desktop comes to the fortune 500.

"Incredibly simple observation and directly on target. There is no battle for the OS market in the U.S., and it's likely to remain so for the duration. Wish what you want to wish, dream what you want to dream, however a lot of the lockdown has already taken place."

Incredibly simple indeed.

The political/ethical argument might not be as strong in the USA as it is in the rest of the world, on a global spectrum (== generalisation). Also, governments find independance extremely important.

However there is not only a political/ethical argument.

Corporations in the USA have, from an economic point of view, _less_ of a reason to switch to something cheaper than in countries where corporations and governments do not have much to spend. However, stating there is _none_ when comparing is a fallacy. Corporations _love_ to save money when they are able to do so.

"And even with you running XFCE4 I bet you're still not impressed with the redraw issues that affect gtk+ if you're on something less than a 1Ghz machine."
700 Celeron, only redraw issue that I see as any worse than other toolkits (with the possible exception of QT) is translucent text widgets. Gtk isn't perfect, but it works just great for me and I prefer it over QT.

"am writing this comment in Windows XP SP1 on a PII 550 w/128 MB RAM. I can run a browser, MS Word, play a high-resolution DivX movie or listen to music, have an instant messenger and Usenet client all running at once and comfortably. There is no way I could do that in a rescent release of Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the OS itself won't even run nicely on this machine. "
The cold hard facts are that DivX would eat 80% of your cycles on a PIII 550; no matter what OS you run. The seconc problem is that people typically watch and listen to a movie, or listen to music; not both at once. Instant messenger and usenet clients only need power if you do something, nothing to brag about there. And since you are using a word processor it is obviously taking the majority of your attention: Because no decent paper is ever written while watching a movie, browsing the web, talking to friends, and listening to music.
You are....lying. I'm sure that's all quite possible, however something has to give and your attention will be the first thing to do it.
Also, I do similar tasks on my 700 Celeron laptop (192MB RAM, also done it with 64 before I bought more RAM). While it was slow with 64, with 192 it runs beautifully. I often need to run abi-word while viewing a PDF for homework. Of course, I gotta be available too, so xchat and gaim are also running. And since I am a web junky, there is a browser window laying open on a workspace. I don't attest to use it all, but it's sitting there wasting memory. I'd watch movies, but I don't like lap warmers and any CPU intensive task turns my laptop into one.

I think you should quit blaiming Linux for your inability to understand its workings. I haven't run into a machine I couldn't get it working perfectly on yet.

Outside of the US, the issue of the first machine to fly is credited the Brazilian Santos DuMond.

Yeah, well New Zealand claims the same thing, but I guess there's some guy in a hut in the middle of Borneo that will also claim that his great, great, great grandfather was flying over the top of the rainforest canopy in the 1800s.

2) Who says I can't be in the middle of writing a paper and then decide to take a break and watch a movie? The word processor is still running in the background and can easily be switched back to if I get an idea. Multitaking is weird like that. Who says I can't listen to music and work on something in Word?

3) DivX may take the majority of the CPU time, but the other apps COMBINED probably wouldn't take the remaing cycles, because they aren't CPU-intensive. Buy a clue.

4) Finally, the main reason for my response: I am lying? How would you like to be sued for libel, buddy? The last time I checked, slandering someone is against the law, a really STUPID thing to do, and generally just fairly TASTELESS. The site moderators can expect an abuse report from me, asking that your comment be removed.

"And even with you running XFCE4 I bet you're still not impressed with the redraw issues that affect gtk+ if you're on something less than a 1Ghz machine."

How strange i never heard complaints from users using XFce4 and surfing the web using merely P200/64MB machines! The only complaint is the webbrowser itself, yet Windows has the same issue with MSIE. The difference of performance between Opera, Galeon and Mozilla Firefox is also marginal at best.

The first people who flew in a human made air craft where Jean François Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, around 1780 and the Versailles palace.
... Well actually it was a paper hot air balloon, made by the Montgolfier Brothers.
There are many reliable testimonies of that event, which is not the case for Ikarus or Leonardo da Vinci drafts.

Santos DuMond was a pioneer which has flown ( and financed ) both baloons and airplanes ( from "lighter than air" to "heavier than air". ) He was a wealty dandy spending his family's money earned in sugar plantations in the "Parisian life" of the early 1900. He was more a pilot and a mecene than an engineer.

The Wrigth brothers didn't build the first airplane, nor the first glider ( Lilienthal has built several good ones before ), nor the first human built air craft ( Ader has built 2 airplanes propelled with an steam engine and others have tried steered baloons before ). They built the first real aircraft, a piece of equipment that can travel trough the air, helped with a internal source of thrust, several times without crash-landing.

It seems that we are missing some of the points of free software. Open standards are great, but there is nothing that keeps someone from deviating from them and making and effort to lock in their clients. Ask Sun what MS did to Java. So the next step is then to make the software open. There is no sense to go and try make a better Linux it is all there for anyone to use. The whole point is not that developers or programers should not be paid for their work. It is to force us to quit going round in circles over the same programs... desktops spreadsheets etc and hopefully we will go on to develope the next new thing. How much of MS RD money is spent on defending itself, making their programs lockins etc. that could be spent developing something accually new. It is hard to give up the cash cow you have to do something new. That is usually forced on us. And as it happens Open Software seems to be that force.
So lets gets over trying to make our living of a word processor. The only inportant thing about a word processor is everyones idea that can now be shared.

Miguel is a talented and versatile developer but he is also a very intelligent businessman able to understand the industry on many different levels. Talking to Miguel guarantees that you are very quickly taken away by his enthusiasm and optimism and his thoughtful strategies and vision on how OSS will take over the world.

LOL! Yer, Miguel has made loads of really accurate predictions.

That is good news for the Novell-based Linux desktop! This means that they won't be able to use the new Evolution, or F-spot or the handy iFolder. This adds more value to our solution at Novell.

This Linux Desktop is directed by Suse, and Suse employees. Quite where Miguel fits into this is anyone's guess. Can what Miguel says be taken as the position that Novell and Suse are taking as a whole? I doubt it.

He believes that the Glow project (an Evolution-clone based on OOo and Java) started out by Sun exactly because of Sun's fear that Evolution will be using C# in the future, but Miguel is not concerned about Glow, as Evolution is already 4-5 years ahead in development, and he is confident that the high level language of C# will speed up their development even more. Besides, Ximian is also working to achieve interoperation between Evolution with OpenOffice.org.

Mmm. I can possibly see some trouble here.

The two companies work together on Gnome...

Err, Suse provide a Gnome option but they do not exclusively base their main desktop on it. That is something else...

We asked Miguel about Mandrake, and he said that Mandrake was kept a bit behind developments the past year because of their financial problems, a problem that happened because "they kept funding every F/OSS application out there that they found 'interesting,' without evaluating sensibly if some of that money can come back to the company," Miguel said.

Considering that Ximian failed spectacularly as an independent company, I find this funny However, I hope Miguel has learned from that.

The internal co-operation with SuSE and Novell is going great, we were told, with Nat Friedman (co-founder of Ximian) heading and steering the desktop happenings at Novell.

We've been through this ten dozen times over. No he bloody well isn't. Suse is in charge of their desktop strategy, and the head is Markus Rex. If you want to know what Suse/Novell's strategy is for the desktop, do an interview with him.

Novell itself is moving on deploying SuSE Linux internally to more than 3,000 desktops, and that's a very exciting moment for the company.

Suse Linux is something different to what Ximian are working on, so this is very hazy. Suse really needs to clarify this, but then again, they have never been the sort of company to comment needlessly.

"Last time I checked KSpread had more subtle problems: the computational engine was behind (no dialog box poping up, but definitely not as advanced as Gnumeric, but its not visually obvious from a screenshot)."

I thought Open Office Calc was the main spreadsheet from the Ximian perspective? Gnumeric is undoubtedly good, but I'm mystified as to why he feels the need to attack KSpread. Well maybe just a little.

"GTK# on Mono, of course," I replied smiling.

The only toolkit you can use to program a video/multimedia/graphical application, with acceptable performance and development time, on Linux/Unix is Qt. This really is very funny. I'd like to see him write it with GTK# and Mono. It'll run like a very old dog, I say smiling.

I'm afraid this is just another attempt by Miguel to tell us about what is going to happen at Novell. The reality, you can bet your house on, will be something very different.

Watch a DivX on a 550 without the sound getting out of sync? No way. I don't care if God made the OS, a 550 don't do DivX too great. I didn't get good DivX until my mhz hit 700.

Uh... I regularly watch DivX/XviD files on my home PC, a P3 450 - works fine in both BeOS and Windows - hell, I've ripped and encoded DVDs to divx on that machine. In fact, right now I'm at work and looking across the room at a P2 350 that's playing a DivX-encoded copy of Noam Chomsky: Distorted Morality... in VLC, of course, because WMP kept dropping frames.

I know it's funny how much self-promotion these Ximian guys try to do. Even though I'm not a big fan of Qt for licensing issues it's pretty much apparent how much wasted time and duplication of effort has gone into Miguel's little Gnome venture that from a technical standpoint is a cobbled together mess. Bonobo anyone?

Can we just get IBM or someone else to buy Trolltech and just forget that Gnome ever existed. These clowns can't even get gtk+ right after all these years. Give me mono and KDE. Gnome is never going to adopt Mono no matter how good the technical merits of it are. I guess Miguel still feels loyalty to the Gnome project, even though all core developers routinely laugh at him behind his back.

Do you really think that selling the company and still retaining name and everything is not success? Your logic is failing you:) That's you being envious:)

The company was never a success independently and never made money. You think that the name has been retained because Miguel and others keep using it . Ximian has actually been split up over Novell's Services Division and Suse. But, that depends on your definition of success. Some people are happy with that, which is fine. Afterall, Miguel seems to be enjoying what he's doing at the moment, and fair play to him.

btw. Nice try to promote KDE and nothing else:) Being pissed off for someone not using and promoting your favorite toolkit does not mean you should feel threatened:)

Nope, Suse uses KDE, and nothing else as their main desktop, so I don't have to promote it - Miguel is supposed to be representing what Novell and Suse are actually doing. What Miguel is saying, and what Suse are actually doing doesn't gel at all, and Nat Friedman being in charge of desktop development is just a blatant lie. I can't believe they're still peddling that one. That's not being pissed I'm afraid. Somebody somewhere is not being entirely truthful - as usual .

Get with the flow, with time KDE and Gnome will cooperate (freedesktop.org) and will coexist on Linux. So, in the end you don't run KDE but Linux.

Well that's absolutely fantastic. Why doesn't Miguel say that then? Instead he keeps dropping hints about the Mono/GTK/Gnome route that will be taken. I just don't see Suse going down this avenue.

Sorry, but regardless of which desktop you like or don't like, things just aren't consistent.

Err, dude. You do realise you've just copied and pasted a slashdot post link (can't believe some people around here). This is just what Nat Friedman says he is - not what Novell says he is. I can't verify that anywhere on Novell's site.

As far as I knew Suse employees were now Novell employees.

Suse is a 'Novell Company' (official, and from Suse and Novell's own sites) so they are still a separate division. Anyway, I think we all know for a fact that Ximian, whoever they are, do not conduct Suse's desktop strategy.

Can we just get IBM or someone else to buy Trolltech and just forget that Gnome ever existed. These clowns can't even get gtk+ right after all these years. Give me mono and KDE. Gnome is never going to adopt Mono no matter how good the technical merits of it are. I guess Miguel still feels loyalty to the Gnome project, even though all core developers routinely laugh at him behind his back.

Goodness me, steady on! I don't question Gnome's right to exist. Whatever the past history and bad blood, people have the right to go out and do what they want. What I don't agree with is the useless, petty, untrue comments, rumours and hint-dropping that has gone on. If I were Miguel, that would be something I wouldn't be proud of.

David, you are creating a lot of flamebaiting over here and you do comment after comment after comment. Tone down, relax, put your thoughts (and comments) together, or get banned. This site ain't Slashdot.

So "the world" is going to force the US into using linux? How is that going to happen? Yeah, because we all know that some third worlder building thatched huts and using a 386 running debian to do his books is going to force someone like Microsoft or any other company into using linux.

Miguel is used to making political comments on his mono blog. He should probably keep quiet about such issues. He's not an american and has no say in who Americans elect. The INS should probably take a look at that visa of his.

> But there is one thing that I am pretty sure of: the US won't domine the world economy forever. China, India, are really strong countries, which can lead the world economy in 20 years, maybe.

Laughable. That's what the Russians said in the 1950's when their economy was (temporarily) booming. That's what the Japanese said in the 1970's and 1980's when their economy was (temporarily) booming. Both countries have now seen their economies stagnate or even reverse direction. Even if China or India can sustain their growths indefinitely (which history says is unlikely), it will be much longer than 20 years. The growth curve, at best, will flatten out as per capita GNP goes up.

Plus, these hugh population countries have to expend a huge amount of money on the basics such as food and shelter. It only leaves so much for other items such as technology, research, etc. China catching the US in total GNP does not signify the countries are anywhere near equal in true 'wealth'; with 4X + as many peole, China would need a much, much larger GNP (approaching equality in per capita GNP, not total) to match the US in key measures of true national wealth such as basic research expenditures, etc.

> Americans never adopted the Metric System ... the rest of the world using it.

This has been addressed endlessly on the net. The US adopted the metric system early on, in the mid 19th century. We just didn't force it down our citizens' throats. Actual use of the metric system now exceeds the English system in the US (if you don't believe this, think of 'megawatts', 'megavolts', 'meaghertz', 'megabytes', and other measurements that have no old English system equivalents).

As far as the 'rest of the world' using metric, I invite you to get into a car in England and drive. Notice the speedometer, or look up at the speed limit signs on the highway. Everything is in MILES per hour. England is transferring to metric slowly, just like the US. The only thing the US lawmakers haven't down is outlaw the old system on paper, because the populace doesn't want them to, which is how an independent democracy works.

David, you are creating a lot of flamebaiting over here and you do comment after comment after comment. Tone down, relax, put your thoughts (and comments) together, or get banned.

Granted, but if you can read it ain't flamebait and I'm certainly not creating it. The thoughts and comments are there. People are more than free to take them down in a systematic and methodical manner, so no - I don't think this is Slashdot at all. For example, prove to me and everyone conclusively that Nat Friedman is directing of Desktop Development happenings at Novell (after all - it's in the article you've posted here). If you can I will eat humble pie, grovel, say sorry to every man and his dog and generally humiliate myself.

This is one of the places where I got my information to back this up in writing:

First off, they didn't get hurt because they had patents, they got hurt during the patent process. At the time you had to be tight lipped about things while the patent process happened. So while the patent was going through they could not demo their planes for people and so forth. The patent office also sat around forever with the patent, so they went years untill they could publicly talk about it. For years people doubted the Wrights ever flew, even though they had prove in a photo.

Far as the other people flying, their claims have been discredited. Analysis of their planes, or design, whatever could be obtained showed they would have not have flown. The wrights flew because the did all sorts of analysis on what was going on, instead of just winging it. Things like their propellers are extremely efficient, better then what some people have on their planes today, because they figured out all the math for it and relized everyones design before them was wrong. The Wrights flew because they understood what was needed and did all the calculations for it. Without that information no one was going to fly.

Yes, Marcus Rex is VP of Novell SUSE Linux business unit. And last I checked Nat Friedman's title was "Vice President of Research and Development, Ximian Business Unit". I'm not sure what point you are really trying to make. The article was correct. I don't think you really have a clear grasp of what the Ximian business unit of Novell is doing or what Nat's responsibilities are. Novell is in the process of shifting to a linux-based desktop internally as well as pushing the Linux desktop externally. Just as large companies like Red Hat and Sun are in the process of defining their desktop offerings. As has been published previously, Novell will hand pick a mix of open source offerings to combine into one desktop. And they will back the freedesktop.org initiative just as Red Hat is doing. And Nat is largely responsible for this initiative inside Novell.

I have read through most of the comments, and it really began as a really "worth-reading" discussion.

I don't know why people have to be so focused on the details that are not even realted to the article, and I understand why Miguel stopped commenting.

I know that some people think that Ximian was not successfull, but they proposed to do one thing, and they accomplished it, and that makes them successfull. If you define success as how much money you have, that is another thing. The reached goals are the ones that make you successfull anyways.

Now about software patents. I'm worried about how the United States will impact Mexico's laws regarding patents.
Specially since we tend to go with the US in most things.

I own a software development lab in Monterrey, and we are working on several projects where we might need to use such technologies that might be seen as patent infrigment. So Miguel, what do you think will patents be managed in Mexico ?

About debian, I was under the impression you were a Red Hat user, since the support before-Novell was focused on it. How come Debian was never fully supported, and lately not at all ?

But there is one thing that I am pretty sure of: the US won't domine the world economy forever. China, India, are really strong countries, which can lead the world economy in 20 years, maybe. These countries have strong comitment to linux, for several reasons.

I am living In france, but I am doing an internship in Japan right now. Linux is pretty big, here, too. When the US won't be the biggest country theay are today, they will have to follow different rules...

Haha, another bitter, envious european that can't stand the economic and military power that the US has. You eurotrash are pathetic . America will be top dog on the planet way after your dead.

It would mean actively favouring a monopoly, which the government cannot do so explicitely.
Certain US government agencies do this already. As I said, USAID only takes communications in MS Word format, on 8.5x11 paper. This is despite the fact that everyone else in the world uses A4 paper. US contractors literally have to take reams of 8.5x11 paper with them when travelling overseas, because nobody else sells it. This is despite all the formatting troubles caused when moving between paper sizes, especially in the world of strict page limits that contractors inhabit.

KDE is moving in direction of geeks (you can set and click everything)

GNOME is moving in direction of Joe User (just works with minimal settings as possible, personaly even though I'm geekish person I like Gnome more, desktop just doesn't play major role for me)

Both goals are too different to lead to consistant desktop. But no one doesn't say that you have to install every desktop. Personaly I live fine without KDE (QT and scribus are the only traces that lead to KDE direction on my desktop). That way my desktop is pretty consistant.

And even if someone would write QT-GTK or GTK-QT there would still be major gap in menus, toolbars and dialogs. I would still ignore and avoid *bloated* (this is my personal opinion so don't stuck on this) KDE design.

There is only one desktop for every user, desktop that does what user needs.

Why doesn't Miguel say that then...

Well, they actualy did. And they did more than once.

GTK dissapear?

Well from my standpoint, that would be a major tragedy. If project which is sized like GTK would dissapear, that would mean major troubles in OSS development model and really good excuse for M$ and others to point out.

Lucky me, community is not as ignorant as your comment.

Gnome will never adopt Mono

Yes, you're probably right. Mono has just too many unsolved legal instances from a standpoint of Gnome desktop.

KDE had some of these instances in the past (don't make a flame thread out of this), and that was the major reason that led to the start of Gnome.

Reason here is the same thing as inclusion of mp3, etc in RH distros (LEGAL STANDPOINT).

btw. Many gnome users use mono. I'm just starting to get a feel for it. Reason: Most likely the most portable and C-like language (never got used to php, perl). I will still mostly use preffered C and C++ but C# is usable for some things too.

"The rest of the world doing things differently doesn't bother anyone in the US... ...everyone else will comply"

A good point, but with the EU becoming more important, and with China being the world's second largest economy within 10-15 years, I'm not sure that the US will be able to dictate to the world in the same way as it does today.

RE: Third World Needs Computers

Of course they do, and yes they also need food, homes, clothing, etc. But there's not a lot the OSS world can do about grain harvests. What it can do is remove some of the barriers to setting up a solid IT infrastructure. I'm not sure it's an either/or situation though.

"the US will be able to dictate to the world in the same way as it does today."
Exactly.

"What it can do is remove some of the barriers to setting up a solid IT infrastructure. I'm not sure it's an either/or situation though."

To set up a solid IT infrastructure you need money.
To run computers you need electr. paower and people skill.
Plus more....
It's estimated that 2/3 of the world's poulation are living below the poverty line.... They have no food, no books, no adeguate shelter, no medicine, no car, electrical power, no streets, no nothing. What would they do if you would hand them over a PC? .... Well, starve to death or die of AIDS....

And Miguel is thinking of doing business with them by "selling" the OSS.
If companies want to make money with OSS then the US, Europe, Japan and perhaps paert of China are the nly markets to targe. Certanly not Ethiopia, Uganda or Pakistan.....

"This acquisition allows us to pursue our shared goal, and that is to reduce the barriers to Linux adoption in the enterprise. This combination can do just that, and make Novell the number one Linux solutions company in the process," said Nat Friedman, Ximian co-founder and senior vice president, now vice president of research and development in the Novell Ximian Services business unit at Novell.

FACT: Miguel de Icaza is an inspirational leader. We need more like him in FOSS.
PROBLEM: Mono and C# aren't worth all the hype. This is NOT a major leap in technology, but I'm willing to accept the fact that it might be the "leader" (by a smaller margin than most would have you believe). I am also aware that almost no new technologies are worth their hype. Hype simply helps build "mind-share" from developers. The more developers that use Mono, the better off mono is as a technology. From the interview, it is obvious that de Icaza has backed off of his original claims/hopes of Mono dominating future GNOME development. This is, no doubt, due to GNOME hackers not being comfortable with Mono. IP concerns abound. Always being a step or two behind MS is a perception that will not go away using Mono. I have very mixed emotions about the Mono project. Because of the concerns above, it has so many hurdles to get over, just to be accepted as one alternative. However, I think the project has been handled in exactly the right way. All details have been covered including a very nice looking IDE. I think this "Windows like" IDE is something missing from most high level languages designed on/for Linux. Sure there are projects in various stages for IDEs (for example) for Python, but they were not designed along with the language and they don't seem to have the momentum that the Mono project has. I'm not picking on Python. To the contrary, I wish de Icaza had gotten behind an existing technonlogy like Python that already has community support and is mature and proven to be a great language (my favorite, in fact).

Is this a "waste" of good leader talent in the FOSS community? Only time will tell. I hope I am wrong about the negative aspects of Mono and C#. But, in today's legal climate my chances of being right are higher.

You can make a school for one. You can cook food for one. You can give food to one.

One only becomes autonomous when they learn to do it themselves; learn it to them instead. Learn how one cooks, and one will be able to cook without dependancy on another. Learn how one growns food and you do not have to give food to the individual for they can independantly make it. Learn how one builds a stable building from stones, and 1st world people do not have to make it for them.

Which database known in humanity contains the most knowledge? Internet.

Simple as that, the Internet as a huge database of knowledge, a platform to share knowledge, a platform to communicate flat-free.